


A Sister's Devotion

by wastefulreverie



Series: PhannieMay Shots 2019 [15]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Family, Gen, My Sister's Keeper - Freeform, Wholesome, episode rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 14:50:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18967453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastefulreverie/pseuds/wastefulreverie
Summary: When Jazz learns Danny secret, she's mainly just confused. It's up to her to piece together what Danny won't tell her, to seek the truth - even if she fears it.





	A Sister's Devotion

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 19 of Phanniemay 2019, Favorite Episode.

Danny bolted, flashing a panicked look towards Sam and Tucker, and ran dramatically out of the back door of the ice cream parlor. _That… was an extreme reaction,_ Jazz decided. Hesitating for only a moment, Jazz barrelled after him, almost colliding with one of the servers. "Danny, wait!"

She pushed through the ' _employee's only_ ' door and came to a crossroads; there were three doors, the breakroom, the storage room, and the door to the alley. "He went this way," she muttered, deducing that he'd probably left the building. "I think that I can head him off..."

When she opened the back door, she stopped abruptly; Danny was still crouching in the middle of the alley. Jazz didn't want to spook him, so she opened the door a sliver and peeked through the frame. A spark of white light appeared around his midsection, seeing to pulsate… out _from_ Danny?

The light changed, forming a ring around Danny. Jazz watched curiously as the ring enveloped him, moving around Danny and changing his clothing into a black material. How was…? Were her eyes even working right? What was happening to Danny, what-?

She had to stifle a gasp as the ring of light ascended over his head, sapping the color from his hair and leaving his eyes a blazing green. His eyes were actually _glowing_. It took her another moment to realize that she had seen Danny like this before, well not Danny. She had seen a _ghost_ that looked like this! A real ghost! How the _hell_ was Danny a ghost!

The staid expression never slipped off his face and he bent his knees and kicked off of the ground, jumping into the air and staying there - _flying_. With determination, Danny jet straight down the alley, his legs twisting into an amorphous spectral tail behind him. There's _still_ no way that could really be-

" _Danny_?" she clutched her head, trying to wrap her mind around what she had just seen.

Sam and Tucker arrived seconds later, having approached from the other side of the alley. Jazz turned to them in bewilderment. Had that really just happened? Had her eyes deceived her? Was Danny actually the ghost same that she had seen earlier? Even though Danny was alive and her brother-

But was Danny alive?

That question halted her internal ramblings, sending a chill down her spine. How awful was that; she wasn't even sure if her brother was _alive_ anymore! How had she neglected this, not seen this before? She had to investigate this, determine what _exactly_ Danny was and wasn't. Jazz had never been more confounded. This was already eating her from the inside, this _uncertainty_ , this revelation.

Sam and Tucker clearly knew about… whatever that Danny was? It was so obvious now, how they often covered for him. And just then, they had done it again; covered for Danny so he could fight that… ghost panther thing. Danny was _fighting_ the ghosts, just like Mom and Dad had always encouraged, always boasted about. _It's almost ironic_ , she realized deliriously. Danny was supposedly some kind of ghost-person and he was following in their parents' profession by hunting them!

The fact that he was fighting explained some more things, but not much. It explained the destruction that he had caused in Lancer's office a few days ago. It explained why the medical supplies in their bathroom moved every few weeks. It also explained why he had been so sullen lately, discouraged. He was dealing with all this stress that he couldn't tell anyone about - keeping his otherworldliness a secret and fighting the ghosts. Mom and Dad were definitely a problem, with their talk about what they'd like to do with ghosts. In retrospect, she probably hadn't been helping either….

When she went home, she went to her bedroom first. Danny had inexplicably gotten home before her, which she figured _was_ explicable now since she knew that he could fly. _Man_ , it still hadn't sunk in. Her little brother could _fly_. How was one supposed to react to that?

She laid on her bed for an immeasurable amount of time, recalling what she had seen and learned. The way that the light had changed him… colors inverting. How Danny hadn't even flinched, familiar with the process of transforming…. The terrifying implications, how he might not even be human or alive anymore…. Because despite what she knew about him, there was no doubt he _had_ looked like a ghost, wielding ghost powers like it was natural to him.

It all kept coming back to that. As she tried to piece together a picture in her head, figure things out, it all came back to one panicked realization: Danny _isn't_ human anymore. Because ghosts can't be alive, right? Even though she swore that she had seen him breathing, become fatigued, and eat….

But he couldn't be both alive and dead, so she had to determine the truth.

Jazz pushed herself off of her bed and walked over to her desk drawer. The clock on her nightstand said it was about 7pm now. Mom had called her down for dinner about fifteen minutes ago, but Jazz had stayed in her room, unable to think about eating. It wasn't that she wasn't hungry, it's just that she couldn't afford a distraction; she had to figure this out before she did everything else. _Priorities_. Even her Spirit Week speech could wait until she understood what Danny was.

She opened the drawer and rummaged through it, looking for what she hoped was still there…. The second prototype of the Fenton Finder. About two years ago she had gotten frustrated that her parents were spending more time working on the Fenton Finder than with her so she stole it. She couldn't bring herself to destroy all the hard work that Mom and Dad had put into the device, locking it away instead. Jazz always told herself that she would return it later but by the time she was ready to return it they had already started the fourth prototype.

She crept down the stairs carefully. She could hear Mom and Dad in the living room, but she knew that Danny hadn't come up to his room yet. He must still be eating dinner. _Good,_ Jazz thought. _I can work with that_.

She stood beside the doorway to the kitchen, her back pressed against the wall. She could hear Danny listlessly moving his silverware across his plate. Was he not eating because he was depressed, or was he not eating because ghosts couldn't eat? It occurred to her that she had seen him eat, but what if that was just an act?

_Well, time to find out._

She'd remembered some of Mom and Dad's notes and recalled that this particular prototype of the Fenton Finder could run detailed diagnostics within a certain proximity of a ghost. Jazz would run diagnostics on Danny and see what they said about him, and then decide on a course of action from there.

She pressed the 'start' button and the device activated for first time in two years. Thankfully, the batteries were still functional, otherwise this would've been a bust. The screen went blank, flashed a pixelated 'FW' logo for a few moments, and then reloaded completely. A single box popped up on the screen: **'1 ecto-entity found. Run diagnosis?'**

Jazz jammed the 'yes' button with enough force that she was worried that she'd broken the device. Then, a graph appeared on the screen. Jazz scanned the results, trying to make sense of them. She was sure that these terms made sense to her parents, but she was having a difficult time making them out….

**-Subject: Human - Ecto-Classification: Unknown - Power Level: 7.2 - Active Ecto-Energy: 3% - Stable: Yes - Signature ID: Unregistered-**

That… was an entire mess. So first, Danny was human… but he had a power level, active ecto-energy, and a stable ectoplasmic composition. At least the human clarification relieved her worries that Danny was _dead._ However, even if he was human, he was definitely also an 'ecto-entity'. The Fenton Finder had only given her more questions. Is it possible to be a living ghost? Because she couldn't see any other way Danny could be a human and have ghost powers!

What really baffled Jazz is that she didn't even know how this had happened - how Danny had gotten powers in the first place. Mom and Dad had _always_ said that it was impossible, and they were ghost experts! Sure, her parents were wrong about many things, but they were usually on-point about ghosts. Or… at least she had thought.

Jazz wracked her brain, trying to recall any incidents that could have given Danny powers. Mishaps happened all the time with their ghost weapons and usually with her more than Danny. The time that Dad had vacuumed her hair, the time her laundry got contaminated, the time that Mom grazed her with an ecto-burner…. The only really big accident that Danny had been involved in lately had been with the Ghost Portal and she knew that it couldn't be that. After all, Sam and Tucker were there and told Jazz that Danny had only been shocked by the plug to the portal. That he had gotten a small jolt of electricity, nothing else, nothing more….

And that had been a complete lie, hadn't it? And she had fallen for it, nonetheless _gullible_. _Wow_ , the incident had been staring her in the face this entire time and she hadn't realized it. She certainly felt stupid now. Danny getting powers from the Ghost Portal made so much sense that it was almost scary. It also was around the same time that he had started acting differently, more fidgety, clumsy, nervous, morose….

So, Danny was part-ghost with ghost powers and his parents were ghost hunters. His two best-friends knew, but they could only help him so much. Jazz realized now, Danny was struggling. She could offer to help him, lend him her own hand. Reassure him that she cared about him, because despite how she acted sometimes, she truly loved her brother. It was just something that siblings didn't say because nobody wants to be the gushy one.

Danny was just a few feet away and in the three minutes Jazz had been standing there, he hadn't stopped pushing his food around. Jazz decided, _I have to talk to him_. _Let him know I'm there for him._

She turned off the Fenton Finder and placed it in a nearby plastic plant; Mom would find it later and assume Dad had left it there. Jazz breathed quietly and stepped into the kitchen doorway. Danny must've noticed her movement, because he looked up from his plate almost instantly. His eyes met hers, boring into her with bored accusation, "What?" he asked.

Jazz forgot everything that she had been preparing to say. "Nothing," she responded. Once again, she had a lapse of disbelief. This… _kid_ \- her brother - was part-ghost? She'd been thinking about it all night, but being in the same vicinity as him just felt underwhelming. Nothing about him suggested that there was more to him beneath the surface. Beneath… _the surface_.

An urge possessed her. Just a nagging little thought. Sure, Danny was supposedly still human, but what would happen if she touched him suddenly. Would he be tangible like a human, or would her hand go through him like a ghost? _Damn curiosity_ , making her wonder these stupid things. She was so burnt out after thinking about Danny after all these hours that she was foolish enough to follow through the action. She walked across the kitchen, scrutinized Danny again for a moment, and jabbed him in the shoulder. Her hand made contact with his skin and he flinched.

"What!" he yelped, recoiling from her violation.

 _Well, that hadn't gone well._ " _No_ thing," she repeated. She really was being ridiculous. Just because she knew that Danny had ghost powers now didn't mean that she wouldn't be able to touch him. It was an absurd notion. Jazz glanced around cautiously, ensuring that their parents weren't around to overhear. She placed a hand on her hip and treaded carefully, "So uh, Danny?"

He rubbed his arm, soothing where she had grabbed him. He didn't respond, so she continued. "I know I've been kind of hard on you lately, but you know I think you're great, right?"

Danny's expression wasn't aggressive, but it was clear she was agitating him. "Yeah, right," he said. " _That's_ not what I hear."

"Then you've heard wrong," she assured him. "Look, I know you think I'm pushy and that I'm a know-it-all. I know you think I can be a jerk sometimes."

Danny was smiling, enjoying Jazz belittling herself. She felt a pang of irritation, "You know you can stop me at any time?"

"I know," he grinned.

Jazz sighed, "All I'm saying is, I'm your sister and I care about you. And even though you think I won't understand," she firmly placed a hand on his shoulder, "you can talk to me about _anything_."

For a moment, something in his eyes looked vulnerable, his facade slipping. He looked down quickly, "Um-"

Before he could say anything, the kitchen shook - a loud _BOOM_ reverberating through the house. Both Jazz and Danny were instantly on their feet, reflexively checking what had blown up. In the living room, Dad's latest invention had misfired again.

As Mom and Dad recited their typical tirade about graphically experimenting on ghosts ("molecule by _molecule_ "), Jazz watched Danny. His breathing went short, and he listened to their parents clearly uncomfortable, terrified underneath. And had an absolutely valid reason to be; hell, knowing what she knew now, _Jazz_ was scared.

She decided then and there, with resounding clarity. Although they were loving, good parents, Mom and Dad were dangerous to Danny. If they captured Danny's ghost self and didn't give him a chance to tell them the truth, the results could be disastrous… fatal… it could destroy this family.

She would stand in the way of Danny and their parents and any other danger that he faced. Even if that danger was himself and his slipping mentality, she would be there for him. She would be his rock. She would do her best to help him stand - _soar_ \- against his obstacles, whether it be ghosts, family, and the decline of his mental health.

_She would be his sister._


End file.
